2016 Lincoln MKX AWD Test Drive Review

The Lincoln Motor Company says, “In the last decade, Lincoln registrations among women have increased 45 percent.” In April, the automaker reported that the amount of female buyers of the brand had increased at more than 11 times the rate of the company itself in the last decade. Lincoln’s luxury sport utility vehicles can be credited with much of that growth. The MKC was a significant factor in Lincoln’s SUV sales increase last year.

The larger MKX, completely redesigned and re-engineered for 2016, has also been popular with women. We were given the keys to a second-generation model with all-wheel drive for a week and discovered that whether your combination of chromosomes is XX or XY, there are plenty of reasons to love the MKX.

2016 Lincoln MKX Exterior

The most obvious ones are on the outside. The MKX’s body is a combination of wind-swept elements and flowing lines. The horizontal vanes of its split-wing grille lead your eye to the high-intensity discharge headlamps and the brilliant LED accent lights that gracefully underline them. At 21 inches in diameter, our tester’s optional premium painted wheels were large, but they appeared perfectly proportional under the sculpted Ruby Red sheetmetal above them. A pronounced, dynamic line runs down the length of the MKX right under the greenhouse area and accents the vehicle’s shapely haunches which connect to its LED tail light casings. Those are joined by an LED light bar that makes as much of a statement at night as the MKX’s side mirrors do when they shine their Lincoln star puddle lights. Clearly, it’s a vehicle in which you can and want to be seen in.

2016 Lincoln MKX Interior

Despite not being as large as its MKT and Navigator siblings, our MKX media review special was spacious enough to fit a generous amount of luxury features inside. Many of them, such as the remote start functionality, soft Ebony leather seats, gleaming High Gloss Walnut Swirl wood trim, user-friendly voice-activated navigation system, heated and cooled front seats, and full-length Panomramic Vista Roof with power sunshade, were standard equipment. Parking or putting the MKX into drive was literally as easy as pushing an easily reachable button, thanks to its lever-less gear selector.

Other luxury features were optional, but so convenient and useful that they’re hard to be seen as anything but essential. For instance, the Cargo Utility Package’s retractable rear storage area cover made leaving our camera equipment in the back a worry-free experience. The 22-way power driver seat coddled us while the Revel Audio system soothed our ears with the clear, rich sound from its array of 13 speakers, whether they were in their Stereo configuration, putting us sonically in the middle of a rock concert’s throng of listeners in the Audience setting, or letting us hear a jazz quartet as if it were playing around us in On Stage mode.

2016 Lincoln MKX Performance

The 2.7-liter EcoBoost V6 provides an ample amount of power in the Ford F-150 full-size pickup. Logically, it offers an even more substantial amount of thrust in the mid-size Lincoln MKX, especially because the twin-turbo engine has been tuned to deliver slightly higher output figures in the Lincoln: 335 horsepower and 380 lbft of torque. Those substantial numbers are routed through a six-speed automatic whose steering wheel-mounted paddles put the “Select” in the proprietary SelectShift name. They went largely unused because right below the “D” for Drive button was one marked “S”. It might as well have been red; we couldn’t fight the temptation to push it to engage Sport mode nearly every time we got behind the MKX’s wheel. Doing that made the MKX even livelier and more responsive.

The right pedal was equally discipline-destroying. Every time we put our foot down and the V6’s turbos spooled up, we were carried forward on a thick wave of EcoBoost, both thrilled and surprised that a company with no V8-powered models can make vehicles that move at such a rapid pace.

The EPA gives the all-wheel-drive MKX with the 2.7-liter EcoBoost V6 fuel economy ratings of 17 mpg in city, 24 mpg on the highway, and 19 mpg combined.** After seven days of mainly city driving and lots of idling with the AC on, we averaged 17.1 mpg.

2016 Lincoln MKX Safety

Wherever we drove the MKX, we were comfortable both physically and mentally. We knew its attractive styling was drawing admiring glances and we were pampered by its stylish and high-end interior. We were also aware that an extensive list of safety technologies were in place to protect us. It didn’t matter if we were leaving a parking space or blasting up the freeways of Austin, Texas. The MKX’s Blind Spot Information System (BLIS) with Cross-Traffic Alert watched our sides as we changed lanes and our backs as we reversed out of a spot in a crowded parking lot. The 360-Degree Camera setup let us see what was behind us and everywhere else from a bird’s-eye view. When spring showers came down from above, the optional rain-sensing wipers swung into action. The Driver Assistance Package’s Lane-Keeping System made sure we were within the dashed lines on the road and if we happened to stray over them without signalling, it gently nudged the steering wheel in the right direction to keep us from swapping paint with another vehicle. We were also kept a safe distance from other travelers on the road by the MKX’s Adaptive Cruise Control, which not only maintained the speed we told it to hold, but made sure we stayed a certain length behind the vehicle directly in front of us. An array of airbags in the front – ranging from side-mounted airbags to one for the driver’s knees – were there to protect us in worst-case scenarios. Even passengers in the outboard rear seats had their own airbags embedded in their seat belts.

2016 Lincoln MKX Overall

Prices for the 2016 Lincoln MKX start at $38,260.* Our review vehicle was loaded with a variety of safety, cosmetic, and convenience options and carried a sticker price of $61,170. After a week, it left with something else: our appreciation of its eye-pleasing styling, elegant interior, and spirited performance, and our understanding of why men and women alike would enjoy the new MKX.